


nor look be lost

by TheCookieMonster77



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chris Giacometti - Freeform, M/M, Phichit Chulanont - Freeform, bad poetry au, story sketch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 01:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12877491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCookieMonster77/pseuds/TheCookieMonster77
Summary: Viktor, feeling gay and excited and absolutely terrified, approaches Mr. Beautiful Poet at the end of the night. He’s run no less than twenty of the most romantic and moving poems he could think of off the top of his head by Chris, only to veto them immediately because nothing could grasp this feeling in his chest right. He ends up settling for a verse of his favorite romance poem, one he’s had memorized since he was twelve like the sap he is, to tell to Beautiful Poet and hopefully impress or sweep Beautiful Poet off his feet (he’s not picky which). Viktor approaches Beautiful Poet with his sweaty hands behind his back and heat in his cheeks and-completely messes up his favorite verse in his favorite poem he’s memorized since he was twelve.Fuck.Poetry lovers Yuuri Katsuki and Viktor Nikiforov meet during poetry night via reciting bad poems. The rest of the bar suffers with them.





	nor look be lost

Phichit and Yuuri are lit nerds with a love for poetry that burns bright and deep. They attend lectures and poetry workshops with an enthusiasm that sweeps everyone off their feet, ringing laughter and shining eyes. Their favorite activity is poetry telephone, stifling their giggles as old latin poems gain Batman and heavy language becomes “ask thou booty ask thou fault.” They record all their favorites in a beat up notebook, doodle-coated cover and pen stained pages barely clinging onto the wire spiral, and never fail to bring it with them to their favorite cafe’s poetry nights.

Scattered among their many recreations of famous verse are also fortune cookie poems, created through the piles of fortune cookie slips they collect just for this. One of these is a bizarre fluke of a poem that’s almost profound and Phichit smirks at Yuuri, mischief twinkling in his eyes, and says, “betcha wouldn’t read this on stage”

Yuuri reads it on stage three minutes later

Amidst his audience, Viktor gasps as this beautiful soft boy with a shy smile and laughter in his eyes comes to the mike and recites the most ridiculous poem. But, as odd as it may be, Viktor is  _moved_

(“Chris,” he says desperately, clutching his best friends shirt. “ChRIS.”  
“Yes Viktor?” Chris says smiling, eyebrows raised.  
Viktor fans himself. “I’m gay.”  
“You’ve always been gay”  
“I’m gayER”)

So Viktor, feeling gay and excited and absolutely terrified, approaches Mr. Beautiful Poet at the end of the night. He’s run no less than twenty of the most romantic and moving poems he could think of off the top of his head by Chris, only to veto them immediately because nothing could grasp this feeling in his chest right. He ends up settling for a verse of his favorite romance poem, one he’s had memorized since he was twelve like the sap he is, to tell to Beautiful Poet and hopefully impress or sweep Beautiful Poet off his feet (he’s not picky which). Viktor approaches Beautiful Poet with his sweaty hands behind his back and heat in his cheeks and

completely messes up his favorite verse in his favorite poem he’s memorized since he was twelve

(“FUCK” thinks Viktor eloquently)

“eXcUSe mE?!” thinks Yuuri angrily. This  ~~gorgeous~~  prick Did Not just mess up a poem by W.H. Auden, aka Yuuri’s favorite poet, much less [one of Yuuri’s favorite poems](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/lullaby-0). The fuck does Gorgeous Prick think he is? Is Gorgeous Prick making fun of Yuuri and his fortune cookie poem? Because that’s just Rude, this is ART

(“FUUUUCK” continues Viktor’s internal screaming, because he doesn’t want Beautiful Poet glaring at him but also he’s still gorgeous and Viktor can’t handle anything)

In his head, Yuuri rips Viktor to shreds about Respecting Art, What The Fuck Asshole in 0.2 seconds with the most amazing and skillfully crafted argument. Physically Yuuri glares at Viktor for a full minute, completely missing Viktor melting into a helpless gay mess underneath his stare, before he turns away with an offended huff and walks out with Phichit

(“What a prick,” Yuuri rants angrily to a sympathetic Phichit

“Im a MESS” wails Viktor into a laughing Chris’s shoulder)

The next week, both are back, eyes sharp as they scan the crowd for each other for entirely different reasons. Their eyes meet and a flurry of activity ensues;

Yuuri, thinking Gorgeous Prick is back to make fun of people, flips through his notebook for one that makes fun of people with no respect for the arts. Or at least piss off someone with Gorgeous Prick’s pretentiousness 

Viktor spends the next hour gathering his courage to approach Beautiful Poet. “How is he even this beautiful” whispers-hisses Viktor. “How can i apologize when I’m basking in such beauty?!”  
“you’re hopeless,” retorts Chris unhelpfully, phone out and recording for posterity

Viktor finally manages to shake his nerves shortly before Yuuri plans on going on stage. “Hi,” he says shyly with a smile. 

Yuuri glares with the fervor of a spurned lover

“Ah,” he says sheepishly. “I’m um, really sorry about last week. I’m. Uh. Really bad at remembering things. Even things by my favorite poet. I had actually wanted to thank you for your poem from last week, I loved it.”  
  
“Uhm,” Yuuri says with the eloquence of a brick, “what?”  
  
“Your poem last time!” Viktor clasps his hands, smile wide and heart-shaped, enthusiasm running over Yuuri like a truck. “It was amazing! Absurdist poetry is fascinating and your delivery was  _perfection_.”

(“Fuck,” thinks Yuuri, feeling vaguely like the world had disappeared from beneath him. Pretty AND sweet AND likes poetry?  _f u c k_ )

“That was a poem made out of fortune cookies,” says Yuuri bluntly, distantly wishing he could swallow his foot so it could shut him up. “I’m not good at writing poetry”

“Wow! Amazing!”

(Viktor’s eyes are literally sparkling. “FUCK” thinks Yuuri louder)

“You delivered what should’ve been nonsensical babbling and made it into a work of  _art_ ” says Viktor, as though he’s actually enchanted. Yuuri would tell him being so nice to make up for last weeks blunder is unnecessary but his heart’s currently clogging up his throat.

“Are you reading one of your favorite poems tonight?” asks Viktor, staring deeply into Yuuri’s eyes.

Yuuri doesn’t recall nodding, but Viktor claps his hands and  _beams_  at him. “Wow! Amazing! I can’t wait to hear it!”

“Uh,” says Yuuri finally. Before he can manage the next bit, Phichit swoops in, smiling sweetly.

“Yuuri, it’s your turn!” Phichit turns his sugar sweet smile on Viktor. “Listen closely to my son. You’re going to  _love_  his.”

Right, thinks Yuuri. Phichit doesn’t know Gorgeous Prick is actually Sweet and Lovely. Nor can he actually hear Yuuri mentally screaming at him to not. They really need to work on their ability to read each other’s minds for these sorts of situations. By the time Yuuri’s finished thinking this, he’s under the spotlight with absolutely no words in his head and a book of nonsense in his hands and all he can think is how badly this will surely end. He sputters and flips through his notebook frantically for a new poem and picks the first one that doesn’t have fortune cookie dust nor Batman in it.

This is a Mistake.

Yuuri is distantly aware he’s reciting what is the cheesiest Love Poem. (Literally. There are no less than six cheese puns.)

(There’s little of Yuuri that’s not left cracked. He can feel his soul leaking out through the crevices. He doesn’t even want to know what Sweet and Lovely thinks of him now. Hopefully the world will swallow him up before he must face Sweet and Lovely again. If. He doubts Sweet and Lovely can even look at him after this)

(“cHRiS” whisper-hisses Viktor, wrinkling Chris’s favorite button down beneath white knuckles. He hasn’t blinked once since Yuuri took the stage. “ _chris_ ” whimpers Viktor, slumping onto Chris’s shoulder. “He likes _cheesy romance poetry_. Chr _is_.”   
Chris holds back his snort and pats Viktor’s thinning hair.)

Yuuri finishes and scrambles off stage, making a bee-line for the bathroom or the bar, he’s not sure which. Then he hears Sweet and Lovely’s voice through the mike-

He turns and sees Sweet and Lovely holding the mike in one hand and holding back a grumpy but fond redhead with the other. And then, while staring him right in the eye, Sweet and Lovely recites........literally the sappiest love poem in the world to Yuuri

(“I can’t believe you were able to do that with a straight face,” says Yuuri fondly, years later.  
“Nothing about me is straight,” says Viktor automatically.  
Yuuri expression turns flat. “Scratch that. I can’t believe you recited the lines in the right order”  
“YUURIIIIIII”)

And so begins the tale of Yuuri and Viktor simultaneously wooing each other via Bad Poems. It becomes an official poetry night tradition. Or at least, Viktor tries to make it official, but the rest of the crowd is so sick of their shit they threaten to kick them both out if they ever read a bad poem again, upon which Yuuri asks Viktor if he’d like to recite Awful Poems to each other over coffee so smoothly that Viktor is halfway through “of course” before he realizes they’re going on a Date

After Viktor finishes swooning, poetry nights gain its first actual official tradition of “take a shot every time Viktor or Yuuri recite a poem about how much they love each other”

(they all end up smashed)

**Author's Note:**

> i have a million and one aus and since there's no physical way for me to write every single one of them, i'm trying something new where i post story sketches of the aus i will most likely not make full-written stories. if this is something that sounds super appealing, please let me know! 
> 
> the next story sketch will probably be the crack time travel au ft matchmaker yurio. whether it's added as a chapter or in a series with this remains to be seen
> 
>  
> 
> [come say hi on tumblr](http://thecookiemonster77.tumblr.com/)


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